Dead Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky convicted of tax evasion

A Moscow court has convicted the late investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky of tax evasion after Russia's first posthumous trial.

The court also convicted Magnitsky's former client William Browder, a Briton who has spearheaded an international campaign to expose corruption and punish Russian officials he blames for Magnitsky's death in a Moscow jail while awaiting trial in 2009.

Browder was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison for tax evasion. He lives in Britain and Russia's options for jailing him are limited. Interpol has refused to include him on its international search list after deciding that Russia's case against him was political.

Magnitsky died after a year in jail during which he said he was mistreated and denied medical care in an effort to get him to confess to tax evasion and give evidence against Browder, who is head of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management.

The Kremlin's human rights council has said there is evidence suggesting Magnitsky was beaten to death, but the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has dismissed allegations of torture or foul play and said last year that Magnitsky died of heart failure.

Russian authorities closed the case against Magnitsky after his death but reopened it in 2011, a move that former colleagues say was illegal because they did not have the consent of his relatives.

"This show trial confirms that Vladimir Putin is ready to sacrifice his international credibility to protect corrupt officials who murdered an innocent lawyer and stole $230m from the Russian state," Hermitage Capital said in a statement.